


Crossing Paths

by CleverFangirl



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F, Mostly Fluff, Teens Au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-18
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-03-31 04:04:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3963703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CleverFangirl/pseuds/CleverFangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before Samaritan, before Decima, before Dominic and Elias, before the Machine, before the numbers, before a taser and an iron in a hotel room, two teenage girls meet under unusual circumstances.<br/>Sameen Shaw is a high school student with anger management problems.<br/>Samantha Groves is a chronic runaway with a knack for computers.<br/>Root and Shaw may be a deadly team, but Samantha and Sameen are another story entirely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

January 23 1996 - 10:00am

It’s 10am and Sameen Shaw is still in bed.  It’s not by her choice, of course.  If she could have her way, Sameen would be be at school right now.  Gym class starts at 10:30, and Coach Webster had been promising the class a free-for-all dodgeball tournament today.  And she’d waiting to see the look on Steven Dunnell’s face when she beat him.  “Girls can’t play sports,” Ha.  She’d show him.

Or at least she would be showing him in... 28 minutes now.  If it wasn’t for the fact that she is home.  In bed.  With a temperature of 101 degrees and her mother’s firm instructions to stay in bed.  This, according to her mother, is what she gets for going out in the middle of winter without a coat on.  Before leaving, Mrs. Shaw had very firmly told Sameen that she would be grounded for at least a month if she wasn’t right there in bed when she got back.  Sameen wasn’t really scared by her mother’s threats.  She wasn’t scared by much at all.  In fact, she was seriously debating sneaking off and going to school anyway, just for gym, just to destroy Steven Dunnell.  She was sure that, sick or not, she could take that loser with her eyes closed.  She’d be back before her mom got back from the hospital.  

Sameen has just about convinced herself to do it (it was 10:08, she could walk to school in fifteen minutes and make it just in time), when she hears something creak downstairs.  

Instantly, Sameen sits up, listening hard.  After a few moments, she hears it again.  Just like she thought, third floorboard in the living room.  There’s someone downstairs.  She considers for half a moment whether or not it’s her mom, home early from her shift (nurses do work weird hours, after all), but quickly dismisses the idea.  Her mom always liked to announce her returns and departures loudly and vocally, with more enthusiasm than Sameen could ever understand.  

Feeling nothing but a mild tinge of curiosity, Sameen gets out of her bed and slips silently downstairs.  She creeps through the kitchen silently, and peers around the corner into the living room.  

There’s a girl looking around the space curiously.  She’s taller than Sameen, with brown hair that falls in loose curls around her pretty face.  

Sameen creeps up behind the girl (careful to avoid the third floorboard).  When she’s sure she’s within punching distance, she spoke, keeping her words cool and collected, “You have five seconds to get out of my house before I call the police.”

To her credit, the girl barely flinches before whirling around to look at Sameen.  Her eyes flick up and down and her eyebrows raise.  “Oh, hello,” She says, smiling warmly as though Sameen had stumbled in to her house, and not the other way around.  

Sameen glares at her, “Four seconds,” She adds, reaching for the house phone.  

“Hey, calm down,” the girl says quickly, raising her hands in a calming gesture.  “I’m not here to cause trouble.  Look,” Her eyes flick upwards for half a second, and when she looks bad at Sameen there are tears in them.  “I’m an orphan, okay?  My parents died when I was six, and I’ve been bouncing from home to home since.  Normally I’m okay with it, but this last one,” She shudders.  “I was just a burden.  No one there liked me, and I can’t blame them.  But I couldn’t stay there, I couldn’t do that to them.  So I ran,” Her last words are barely intelligible, croaked out through sobs.  

Sameen raises an eyebrow, “Oh really?”

The girl stop crying suddenly and looks up at Sameen for a moment, apparently calculating.  Then something clicks in her eyes and her whole demeanor changes.  Just a seconds ago, she’d been hunched over, and sniffling, looking small and vulnerable.  But now she was standing tall, her posture confident, her tears stopping in an instant.  There’s a smirk on her lips as she asks, “Not one for the sob story, then?”  And there’s an arrogance in her tone that grinds on Sameen’s nerves.  Still, she doesn’t reach for the phone as the girl continues speaking.  

“I _did_ run away,” The girl says calmly.  “Just not from foster care.  My mom’s back in Texas, she probably hasn’t even noticed I’m gone yet.  I’m just here because I need a computer to let her know not to look for me.”

“You know internet cafes exist for things like that, right?”  Sameen offers.

“If I had money, I’d gladly go there,” The girl says not quite meeting Sameen’s gaze. Then her eyes flick back up quickly.  Big brown worried eyes looking at her as the girl asks, “Are you still going to call the police?”

Sameen narrows her eyes, thinking for a moment.  She can tell that this girl is unarmed, and though she’s taller than Sameen (and maybe a year or two older), Sameen is confident she can take her in a fight if it comes to it.  Sameen’s never been in professional martial arts training (her mother had thought it a bad idea for some reason) but she’s still gotten in her fair share of fights in her day.  She’d broken Jeremy Ryder’s nose in fifth grade.  She tends to get violent when she gets angry, and Sameen’s most default setting is angry.  

“Why’d you run?” She asks curiously.  She wonders why she hasn’t called the cops yet.  After all, there’s a strange person in her house who could be lying with every word she spoke.  She might even have accomplices elsewhere, but somehow Sameen isn’t worried.  She isn’t scared.  If anything, Sameen is almost... interested.  

The girl shrugs idly, “I got bored.  There’s only so much you can do in a small Texas town before you want to rip your eyes out of your sockets,” She says in a cheerful tone that would probably worry more normal people.  

But Sameen has never really been normal.  She just smirks, “So you just took off?  Without planning or taking anything with you?  Pretty stupid plan if you ask me.”

The girl’s smirk grows a little wider, as though she finds the critique flattering.  “I used the last of my money on a bus to the city,” She explains calmly.  “I’m hoping to get a job around here, but first I thought I’d let Momma Dearest know not to worry.”

Still doesn’t sound like that clever of a plan to Sameen but she doesn’t really care. “Why can’t you just call your mom?” She asks.

The girl bites her lip in something close to embarrassment or shame.  “I- uh, I’d really rather not hear her response to what I have to say.”

Sameen doesn’t understand the difference between reading and hearing responses.  They’re just words after all.  But she decides not to push the subject.   “You play the orphan card often?” She asks instead, her voice flat.  

The girl shrugs, “It gets a lot of sympathy and stops people from calling the cops immediately most times,” She adds an extra emphasis to the end of the sentence, eyeing the phone still close to Sameen’s hand warily.  

Sameen rolls her eyes, “I won’t call the cops as long as you don’t do anything stupid.”  She’s not quite sure she knows what _anything stupid_ is, but she’s confident she’ll know it if she sees it.  She nods to the computer against the wall.  “Computer’s there.  It’s probably still shut down, so you’ll have to boot it up.  You can use it to email your mom or whatever.”

“Thank you!” The girl says with a perky smile, sitting down at the chair in front of her computer.  She pauses for a moment, then turns to face Sameen again, “I’m Samantha, by the way.  But you can call me Sam.”

Sameen rolls her eyes again, “I’m Sameen, and you _can’t_ call me Sam.”

The girl smirks again, “Well aren’t you just a killjoy.  And here I was already planning out our matching jackets.”  She runs a finger between her shoulders, indicating where the writing on the hypothetical jackets would be, “Team Sam forever.”  She giggles, “Oh well, thank you very much for being so kind to me, Sameen,” She draws out the name with an almost sickening sweetness.  

Sameen scoffs, “Whatever.  I’m hungry.”  She pauses for half a second then sighs, “Do you want a sandwich?”


	2. Chapter 2

January 23 1996 - 10:23am

Samantha politely declines a sandwich from the strange girl whose home she’s broken into.  She watches Sameen leave for the kitchen (muttering something about dodgeball and missed opportunities) and takes a moment while the computer is starting up to wonder at this strange girl.  She’s kinda cute in a grumpy sort of way.  If Sam had to guess, she’d say Sameen is about fifteen years old, dead center in those wonderful teenage years.  Sam wonders if maybe that’s why Sameen is so grumpy and rude (she naturally assumes Sameen is like this with everyone she meets, and not just the friendly home intruders).  Still, Sam remembers the complete lack of fear or even surprise on Sameen’s face when she’d revealed herself to Sam and threatened to call the police.  If anything, Sameen had looked annoyed, but certainly not worried at all.

Sam couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was something intriguing about this girl.  

The computer plays a little tune to indicate that it’s up and running and Samantha shakes her head and cracks her knuckles.

It’s time to let Root out to play.  

Root snickers to herself as she slips a blank disk into the computer and pulls up the Shaw family’s internet history.   _Email her mother,_ she scoffs.  That _would_ be the excuse she came up with.  As if her mom would even know how to read an email.  As if Root wants her mother to know where she is.  

This isn’t the first time she’s run off, not by a long shot.  Ever since Hanna had... Ever since she’d been 12, Root had been running away.  At first it was just sneaking out of the house and disappearing for a few days at most.  But Sam never left Bishop, and she always came home.  Until she was 14, and Root took a bus to the city.  She’d needed more tech than Bishop could supply for what she had planned.  She was gone for five days while she orchestrating Trent Russell’s “robbery,” but Sam had come home before Trent met his untimely, violent death.  She’d been in the living room when the news on the radio announced the tragic incident.  Root had smiled, hearing how her plan had succeeded so well.  

She had tried to stay home and be a good girl after that.  Root had had her revenge, and now Sam needed to take care of her mother, whose health was steadily declining as more time passed.  But every now and then, Root would want out.  Out of this boring little town where everyone knew everyone but no one knew her.  Out of this miserable life of loneliness and pain.  She wanted to get out there and try her skills.  Her fingers itched to break into more secure accounts, to arrange for the downfalls of others who deserved it.  And maybe some who didn’t.  Root liked the feeling of power she got as her fingers danced over the keyboard.  So a few months after Trent’s death, she’d taken off again.  

She’d run to the same city, hung out for a while, hacked a few ATMs, before Sam had convinced herself to come home.  She’d held out another almost six months then before Root had demanded another adventure, this time going to the next city north of Bishop.  

And so it had gone for three years, Root running away and gaining access to as many computers as she could before Sam’s conscience got the better of her and she returned home to her mother.  After her third time running, Ms. Groves had stopped calling the police.  She just waited for Samantha to come home, ready with a bottle in her hand and a torrent of guilt-inciting words most of the time.  Though once, the last time she’d run, almost four months ago now, Sam had come home late on her seventeenth birthday, shamefaced and bracing herself.  She’d been surprised to find her mother collapse into tears of relief at the sight of her.  She told herself that she should be glad her mother cared for her, rather than worried about what the illness was doing to her mind.  

Root shakes her head.  These thoughts are pointless.  She needs to focus.  She pulls up a proxy program and quickly sets it to work compiling all the data on the computer, and especially that stored in the internet history.  People are so careless with the internet, Root knows.  Their passwords, identification information, even their bank records, can all be easily accessed through the internet.  And all of this is being copied to her disk.

“You sure you don’t want anything?”

Root almost jumps out of the chair at Sameen’s sudden question.  As it is, she hides her mildly startled jump as best she can and quickly opens up a new tab on the web browser.  She throws a winning smile over her shoulder at the girl leaning against the entrance to the kitchen, sandwich in hand, “I’m really okay.”

Sameen shrugs and takes another bite of the sandwich.  “How long does it take to send a simple email?” She asks thickly.  

Root pulls up a dummy email and started typing away.  “It’s not a _simple_ email,” she corrects smoothly.  “I’m telling my mother why I’m abandoning her.  I’ve got to word it just right.”  

She looks back over her shoulder just in time to see Sameen roll her eyes.  “Whatever,” the younger girl mumbles, eating the last of her sandwich.  Apparently still hungry, Sameen turns to return to the kitchen.

“Don’t worry Sameen,” Root calls as Sameen disappears from sight.  As soon as she’s gone, Root deletes the drafted email, and ejects her now very full disk.  She holds it delicately, smiling widely, “I’ll be out of your hair before you know it.” 


	3. Chapter 3

January 26 1996 - 4:15pm

Sameen Shaw is furious.  She’s spent the last three days in a ferocious rage, lashing out at everyone who even so much as looks at her wrong.  She’s walking home from school today because she was given detention for a week after she punched Steven Dunnell in the nose yesterday.  When the principal had asked her what Steven had done to prompt such a violent response, Sameen had glowered and muttered, “I don’t like his attitude.”

Sameen’s mother had been called in to collect her troublesome daughter.  While Mrs. Shaw and Principle Rendler had spoken, Sameen--sent outside to wait in the hall--had overheard their conversation.  

“I’m sorry again about Sameen,” Her mother had said.  “She’s just angry-”

“She’s _just angry_ a lot, you know,” Principle Rendler had replied.  

“It’s not her fault,” Came the adamant defense.  “There was- We are- There’s been some trouble, a robbery I suppose you could call it.  The police are looking into it, but I know Sameen’s taking it hard.  Give her a few days to calm down, she’ll be back to normal soon.”

The principle had sighed and said the best he could offer was a week’s worth of detention cleaning chalkboards.  Her mother had agreed that the punishment was fitting.

Sameen, still out in the hall, had scoffed.   _A robbery_ , she’d thought to herself, _more like all of our bank accounts being cleaned out and the credit card being used in three states before we could cancel it._

The police had been the ones to alert the Shaws to the sudden changes in their financial situation.  The bank had called the authorities when they’d noticed the unusual activity, and after a bit of investigation, the officers had declared the matter worth investigating.  So they’d arrived at the Shaw residence late that evening and asked Mrs. Shaw if she knew anything about the matter.

The moment Sameen, listening to the conversation from the top of the stairs, had heard what had happened, her blood had run hot.  She didn’t know how, but she knew _who_.  How could she have been so stupid?

Needless to say, her mother had been distraught to find that nearly all of her savings had been lost.  The police assured her that they would do everything in their power to get her money back, and the bank had insured her account to a certain sum, so she and her daughter wouldn’t be starving.  But could she think of anything that would help them track down whoever had done this?

That had been when Sameen had stepped forward and given a fully detailed description of the girl she’d allowed into her home, along with an apology to her mother for letting this happen.  The policemen had listened to her speak, but as soon as she mentioned that this home intruder had been around her age, their words had taken on an increasingly skeptical tone.  

When she’d finished, they’d sat her down and explained that it hadn’t been a smart decision to let a stranger into her home, but the person they were looking for, the bad guy who’d done this, was likely an experienced hacker, with skills beyond those that a teenage girl could have.  So though Sameen was lucky that her “friend” hadn’t done anything else while she’d been here, it was unlikely she was the suspect the police were looking for.  

Sameen had realized very quickly that she wasn’t going to get anywhere with these men.  If they were convinced that they needed to track down a big bad clever genius, then fine.  She knew the truth.  She wasn’t sure why she was so positive that Samantha had perpetrated these crimes, but she was damn sure she’d never again make the mistake of trusting someone, or worse, _helping them_.  

She still didn’t know why or how, but Samantha had tricked her, had tried to take everything from her and her mother.  Sameen had made a promise to herself as the police officers had left that night, with promises to call in a few days with updates on the case, that the next time she saw that Samantha, she would end her.

These thoughts bounce back and forth in her mind as she waits for the crosswalk light to change.  She’s brimming with directionless energy, pent up frustration.  She wants to punch someone again, even though she now knows from experience that though it feels good for a second, it doesn’t help in the long term.  Not with this.  

The light changes and Sameen crosses the street.  As she enters the park, her eyes look around idly.  It’s midwinter, but there are still some people in the city who can’t stay indoors all the time.  There’s a few joggers bundled up and running on the path, there’s an elderly couple sitting on a bench together, trying to persuade some pigeons to come closer for food, there’s a family of five building snowmen in the center of the park, and over by that tree there’s a girl-

Sameen stops dead in her tracks, fighting to keep her jaw from dropping.

No way.  It wasn’t possible.  She wouldn’t be stupid enough to stick around...

Sameen doesn’t even stop to consider what she’s doing before she stalks across the park, fury pulsing through her with every step, until she’s right behind the girl.  

Then she taps her on the shoulder, “I think you have some things that don’t belong to you.”

Samantha turns around and Sameen has just enough time to smirk at the astonished look on her face before she punches her square in the face.  

Alright, _this_ time, she’s pretty sure it does help.  

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

January 26 1996 - 4:25pm

“Ow! What the _hell_?” Root shouts, stumbling back at the force behind the fist that had come out of nowhere and connected (quite painfully) with her nose.

“Oh, you’re asking what the hell?” Comes the angry response.  “How about you tell me what the hell you did with my mom’s money?”

Sam blinks several times to clear the tears that had welled up in her eyes at the pain.  When she can see again, she’s surprised to see that she’s looking down at a dark and furious face that she recognizes.  It’s that girl, the one who didn’t call the police when she’d broken into her house.  What was her name again?

“Sameen?” Sam asks, gently prodding her nose and wincing.  It hurts, but she’s reasonably sure that Sameen came just shy of actually breaking it.  How in the world had this girl found her?  Root had been more careful in this city than she’d been anywhere else, never staying in one place too long in one place, never setting up her computer in the same location twice.  When she’d finally made the transactions she’d come here to make, she’d run immediately after and had come to the park to see what happens next.  She’d left no trail, there was no way a fifteen year old girl could have tracked her down.

Unless... She looks at Sameen again, this time taking in the backpack on the girl’s shoulders, the winter coat she’s wearing, the light dusting of chalk dust in her hair.  Sam shakes her head in mild astonishment, she hadn’t been _tracked down_.  She’d been found on a chance.  Sameen is on her way home from school.  Though now she appears to be somewhat sidetracked.  She seems a little upset with the way Root had handled the family finances.

If Root believed in a god, she’d say it has a sick sense of humor.

Still, better to play ignorant. “What are you-?”

“Don’t play games,” Sameen snarls, taking an aggressive step forward, prompting Sam to step back automatically.  “I don’t know how you did it, but you came very close to ruining my mother’s life, not to mention mine.  Now, there might be a good reason why I shouldn’t drag to to the nearest police station, but I’ll be damned if I can’t think of one.”

She reaches out to grab Sam’s arm, but Sam steps just out of her reach, raising her eyebrows.  “And you think the police will believe you? You think they’ll arrest me and take me away to prison on nothing than your extremely angry words?”  She blinks her eyes rapidly, and starts tearing up again.  When she speaks, her voice is pitched a bit higher, “Honestly, officer, I don’t know what she’s talking about.  She just came up and attacked me, then dragged me down here.  She says I did something to her mom but I don’t know what she’s talking about.  Sir, I don’t think she’s quite right in the head,” by the last word, she’s quit the act and is now looking at Sameen with a confident smirk.  “Sorry kid, but you got played.  The police won’t be able to help you with this one.”

Sameen looks at her for a moment, and though Sam tries to read her face, she can see nothing to indicate what the other girl is thinking.  Then Sameen just shrugs, “Then I guess I’ll have to teach you a lesson myself.”

Sam barely manages to dodge the second swing aimed at her face.  She throws her hands up quickly, “Hey, hey! Woah, calm down.  Just listen, okay?  I needed your mom’s money for something I’m working on.  I was going to give it back.”  Probably.  Maybe.  She’d considered it briefly for a moment once, she’s pretty sure.  

Sameen glares at her, fists still raised, clenched tight but held steady.  Sam looks at the fury in this girl’s face and realizes just how angry she’s managed to make her.  She doesn’t know whether she should be endeared or terrified, and she’s probably a bit of both.  

“Listen,” Sam says as calmingly as she can.  “I can’t do anything right here, but the next time I’m on a computer, I’ll send your mom her money back.”

That doesn’t seem to make much sense to Sameen, who looks like she’s suspecting some sort of trick.  “You’ll just give us back everything? Why?”

“Because you’re cute and I like you,” Root replies casually.  Sameen raises her fists and she hurries to add, “Because I’d rather not have my nose broken.  Because I’ve gotten what I needed out of your money, so I can return it.”

“What do you mean, you got what you needed out of it?” Sameen asks quickly.

Root sighs, “I needed to trick an investor into thinking I had more money than I do in order to prove to him that the transaction he was going to be making was safe.  As soon as I showed him the money I took from your mom, he trusted me with his accounts, which I promptly emptied, and trust me Sameen when I say that his money is much more impressive than your mother’s savings.”

“So,” Sameen says slowly, still looking like she really wants to attack Root.  “You’re saying that you used my mom’s money to trick some other idiot into giving you access to his bank files so you could steal _even more_ _money_ from him-”

“Does it help if I tell you that he really doesn’t deserve that money?” Root asks, crinkling her nose a little.

Sameen glares at her, and continues through clenched teeth, “So now you’re going to give my mom back her money because you have more lucrative funds to play with, am I getting this right?”

Root nods, “More or less.”

“Just one question,” Sameen states, suddenly stepping close to Root and standing up on tiptoe that their noses are almost touching.  “Why should I trust you?”

“You shouldn’t,” She says simply.  “Trusting people is stupid and bad for business.  Personally I never trust them,” She adds with a smirk, taking a step towards Sameen so that if the other girl hadn’t backed away, they might have kissed. “But, I do give my word that I’ll put back every penny of money I took from your mother before the day is out.”

“You might have a bit of a problem keeping that timetable, sweetie.”

Sam hears the words and sees the large man grab Sameen from behind but the first thing she registers about the situation is the sound of a gun being cocked.  

Sameen obviously doesn’t grasp the situation as quickly as Root does, because for a moment she struggles in the man’s grip.  “Hey let go-!” But she stops very quickly when he presses his gun more firmly into her side.  

The man is wearing a nice suit, he’s probably in his mid forties, and his smile as he speaks to Root is stone cold.  “So you’re working for the hacker that stole my boss’s money I hear,” He says calmly, as though they’re discussing the weather.  

Root doesn’t say anything, just looks at the man and waits for him to continue.

He obliges quite quickly, “See my boss really isn’t happy with how things worked out with that whole “investment” plan your boss cooked up.  So here’s what we’re gonna do.  I’m gonna take your friend here,” He gives Sameen a little shake, which he might not have done if he could see the murderous look on the girl’s face. “And we’re gonna go for a ride.  You’re gonna go back to your boss and tell them to fix what hell they raised on my boss’s finances.  Once everything’s right as rain, we’ll talk about getting you your friend back.

“You understand, kid?”

Root was seething.  She’d known it had been risky to meet her “investor” in person, but it had been the only way to get him to trust her (or her fictional “boss” in this case) enough to provide access to his accounts.  She’d been slightly worried about the dangers posed to allowing a senator to see her face, but she hadn’t been planning on staying in one place long enough to be spotted.  But Sameen here had interrupted her plans slightly, halting her in her tracks just long enough to be tracked down.

And now look at where they were.

Sameen is trying to silently communicate with Sam, mostly to ask her what the hell was happening.  As subtly as she can, Sam shakes her head in the easiest calming gesture she can think of.  It’s not like she can explain to Sameen that the man she’d conned out of his fortune was a congressman and the man currently holding a gun to her back was likely some sort of private security team member.  Based on his tactics, she’d guess his work didn’t lie in the area of “strictly legal”.

She fights down a smirk as the man waits for her acknowledgement of his terms.  She knows she has to accept (she can’t let him kill poor Sameen here in broad daylight, it’d draw too much attention) but she can make him wait for it.  Just a little.

His face is growing impatient when she finally nods and says, in a very scared, almost tearful voice.  “Yes fine.  Please don’t hurt her, okay?  I’ll-I’ll go talk to my boss we’ll sort this out, just don’t do anything to her.”

Sameen’s look of insulted skepticism makes her wonder just for a moment if she’s laying it on a bit thick.  But then the man holding Sameen smiles cruelly and she knows she’s played her cards well.  She’s offering up the image of a scared little girl who was just doing as she was told and didn’t realize how far in over her head she was, and he is eating it up.  “You go work on getting that money back, and we’ll see how your friend fares after that,” He sneers, giving Sameen a little shake.  “We’ll be in touch.  Don’t even think about following us.”  He nudges Sameen in the back with his gun, “Come on, kid.  You and me are going for a ride.”

Sameen takes a moment to shoot one last furious glare at Sam before she allows herself to be escorted to the street.  Sam stays put, watching as the man opens the back of a black unmarked van and shoves Sameen inside.  She watches as he joins another man in the front seat of the van, and they drive off down the street.  She can feel the weight of the cell phone the man “surreptitiously” slipped into her back pocket when he thought she’d been distracted.  He’ll call sooner or later, expecting a progress report on getting his boss’s money back.  

She stands there for a few moments, debating what to do.  Can she give back the money?  She can, but she’s not going to.  Can she walk away and leave Sameen to die?  Definitely, but something twinges in her stomach at the thought of admitting such outright defeat.  

A smile creeps across Root’s lips as she concludes that the third course of action she considers is by far the most favorable.  She pulls her thin coat tighter around herself and leaves the park, making her way to an internet cafe she’d noted the presence of a few days ago, but has yet to enter.  She can find a computer there, and a computer is just what Root needs.  

She’s not just going to outsmart these men who think they’re so clever.  She’s going to _destroy_ them.  


	5. Chapter 5

January 26 1996 - 5:45pm

Sameen knows that she should be scared.  Or nervous.  Or at least slightly upset.  She’s confident in the fact that any _normal_ person in her situation would be a terrified bundle of emotions.  But Sameen has never really done emotions very well, if at all.

All she feels right now is boredom and irritation.  

“I’m hungry,” She says for the fifth time since the crazy man with the gun had pushed her into a small storage room in what appeared to be a largely abandoned warehouse.  She’s been sitting in that room for over an hour, hands and feet duct taped to the arms and legs of a chair.

The man sighs, leaning up against the wall.  “Then you should have thought of that before you went to meetup with your little friend.”  

“I keep _telling_ you, she’s not my friend,” Sameen mutters darkly.  Because it’s true.  She hates that Samantha girl as much as this guy does.  Probably more.  Sameen is very good at hate after all.  If she gets out of this in one piece, Samantha should pray that they never meet again.  Because the next time Sameen sees that girl, she’s not going to stop with a punch to the face.  

The man shrugs, “You two seemed pretty friendly to me.”

“Well you obviously don’t know how to read people.”

“Listen kid,” and suddenly the man is very close to Sameen.  So close she can feel his breath on her face.  “You’d better hope that she is your friend.  Because if she doesn’t follow through with getting her boss to fix this mess, you’re not leaving this building in anything but a body bag.”  

Sameen wonders if this guy knows how hard he’s being played.  She’d heard Samantha talking about stealing from an important person, but she hadn’t mentioned anything about a boss.  This guy is so convinced that he knows both of them, that he’s got them both figured out completely.  That he _understands_ them.  And suddenly Sameen can’t stand it anymore.  She needs to wipe that smug grin off his face right now.  So she braces herself for half a second then headbutts this guy in the face as hard as she can.  

He screams, backing away and holding his face in his hands.  Sameen can’t hold back the little smile that jumps to her lips at the sight of blood trickling from his nose.  She really hit him hard.  

He’s still shouting and cursing, holding his nose, when he whips out his gun and points it at her, “You little bitch!”

Sameen wonders if she’s actually about to die when suddenly he calms down, lowering the gun a little.  “You know what you just did?”  He asks confidently.  “You just shortened your _friend’s_ time limit.”  He pulls a phone out of his pocket and presses one of the speed dial numbers.  “You’d better hope she’s faster than we thought she’d be.  Or else you, kid, are in for a world of trouble.”  He puts the phone on speaker as it rings, apparently hoping to intimidate Sameen with Samantha’s response, whatever that may be.

Samantha picks up after a few rings, “Hello?”

The man’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes as he speaks, “Hey there kid.  I hope you’ve talked to your boss already because-”

“Oh hello, Jake,” Samantha interrupts him, her voice sickeningly sweet and not at all scared or worried.  “I was just about to call you.  You _are_ Jake Pyper, right?  Of Pyper Protective Services?  Working on proving to daddy that you can handle the company business?”  She clicks her tongue.  “I bet he’d be disappointed if he knew about this client of yours.”

“The client whose money _your_ boss stole,” Jake snaps back, looking confused and angry.

“Yeah, about that,” Samantha says lazily.  “We’re going to have to renegotiate.  My boss isn’t really happy with how this situation has gone down.”

“Unless you want your friend to die a painful death, you’ll tell your boss to get on this right now.”

Sameen glares at him, “I keep telling you, I’m not her friend.”

Samantha chuckles at the comment, “She’s right you know.”

Jake’s eyes narrow, “Then there’s not much protecting her from me, is there?  The bitch did attack me.”

Samantha laughs, a little surprised and a little impressed and incredibly amused, “Yeah, she’s a little firecracker like that.”

 _So glad to entertain_ , Sameen thinks to herself.

“So you won’t mind if I kill her,” Jake says, taking a little more care in pointing his gun at Sameen again.

“No,” Samantha says, and Sameen wonders if she should be scared at the thought of death before the other girl continues.  “That is, if _you_ won’t mind if I air your boss’s dirty laundry to the press.”

“What?”  Jake snaps quickly.

“Wow this guy is a piece of work,” Samantha comments, and Sameen can hear the sound of typing on the other end of the line.  “I didn’t know it was possible to hire that many prostitutes in a year.  Either he’s acting as a proxy, or he’s a very lonely man.  Either way, I doubt his wife or his fellow senators are going to be very sympathetic.  And then there’s all the weapons he’s allowed smuggled into the country, and the drugs-”

“What the hell do you want?” Jake demands, interrupting her.  

Samantha chuckles, “Well isn’t that the question?”  She pauses for a minute, apparently thinking.  “Let’s start with you letting Sameen go and promising to never bother her again, _and then we can talk_.”

Jake raises his eyebrows, “You want me to give up my bargaining chip?”

“Hey!” Sameen shouts before she can stop herself.  “Get me out of this chair and I’ll show you what a bargaining chip can do!”

“Calm down, Sameen,” Samantha laughs again.  “I’m sure Jake here will be more than happy to release you.  That is, unless he wants me to go ahead and forward all these rather incriminating emails I have drafted and ready to send at a moment’s notice that will not only ruin his boss’s career, but his own too.  You wouldn’t want that, would you, Jake?”

Jake’s hand is clenched so tightly his nails are drawing blood as he responds, “No.”

“Good,” Samantha almost purrs.  “Now why don’t you let Sameen go, and then _my_ boss would like a word with you.”  

Sameen wonders what that conversation will be like, though it’s clear she’s not invited to stick around and listen in.  Jake pulls out a knife and quickly cuts through the bonds around her wrists and ankles before throwing her backpack at her.  He opens the door and calls out to his few armed buddies waiting in the warehouse, “Let the kid through.  She’s not part of the deal anymore.”

Sameen walks through them with no fear, no concern, not even more than a twinge of relief.  She exits the warehouse through a side door and takes a few minutes to determine what part of town they’d dragged her to.  When she figures it out, she smiles.  She’s just a few blocks from home.  The sun’s going down, but if she hurries, she should be home before her mother gets back from her shift.  

As she adjusts her backpack and starts walking, Sameen decides that today has been very strange.  And if she can, she’ll do her best to forget that any of it ever happened.  


	6. Chapter 6

January 26 1996 - 6:00pm

Root smiles as she hears the door close behind Sameen through the phone.  She sincerely hopes Jake and his boys won’t be stupid enough to go after her again.  Root can’t promise she’ll be around, or in the mood to care, the next time the girl’s in danger.  

While Jake had been coordinating Sameen’s release, Root had attached a crude voice-altering device to the cheap phone she’d been given.  It wouldn’t do much to obscure her tones, but the slight difference, coupled with Jake’s intense conviction that she had a boss who was older and more clever than a seventeen year old girl, should be enough to support the new identity.  

She activates the device and speaks again, “Hello Jake.”  She can almost hear the man jump on the other end and bites back a smirk.  “I hear you wanted to talk to me.”

To his credit, Jake does his best to appear unfazed.  “So you’re the big boss?  The one who got a kid to do your work for you?”

“That’s a harsh accusation to make, Jake, considering all the kids you and your team have running drugs for you in high schools,” she replies smoothly.  

“How do you-”

“Know that?” Root finishes for him, smiling at the computer.  “I know everything about you, Jake.”  It had taken her a bit longer than she’d planned to decrypt the emails sent between Jake and Senator Morgan.  But as soon as she’d broken in, she’d found a goldmine, leading her to several other proxies and sites where they hid their less than humanitarian business practices.  Root knows that she has more than enough on both of these men to send them to prison for life.  She briefly considers doing just that, letting the authorities take care of them, lock them away for the rest of their lives, before she remembers.  The police are useless.  Even with all of this evidence gift-wrapped for them, they’d probably still mess it up.

Root shakes her head, it’ll be more fun to deal with them herself anyway.  

“You’re right you know,” She says casually.  “You _did_ just let your only bargaining chip walk out the door.  If it helps, keeping the girl there wouldn’t have done much to stop me.  You dug your grave the moment you approached my associate.”

She waits a few moments, revelling in the Jake’s fear and uncertainty, before she speaks again.  “Do you want to know what’s going to happen now, Jake?”  She asks.  “Do you want to know how I’m going to release everything I have on you and your boss?  Not to the police, but to the press.  I’m going to let them tear you apart every day for weeks.  Because just when you think they’re done, that they’ve wrung you dry and you can finally move on, I’ll send them something else, something even more astonishing, to whip them into a frenzy.  

“You will never have any rest from them.  You’ll never be free of reporters.  You’ll never work in the security world again.  And if you continue to cause trouble for me, I might ‘discover’ something a bit more incriminating to far more dangerous people.  

“If you try to find me, I’ll know.  If you track down my associate and attempt to use her against me, I’ll know.  And believe me when I say, you do not want to make me angry, Jake.”

She can hear his shaky breath.  She can almost see his trembling hands.  He seems to have finally grasps just how far in over his head he’s found himself.  “Who-Who _are_ you?” He asks.

She doesn’t try to stop her smile as she says out loud for the first time, “My name is Root.”  

\----

After concluding her business with Jake Pyper, Root decides to return the funds she’d taken from the Shaw family.  She honestly hadn’t been planning on giving the money back, but after hearing about the way Sameen had handled being kidnapped, she decides that she likes this girl.  Before completing the transfers, she adds a few extra thousand of the senator’s dollars to Sameen’s college fund (which she had also emptied).  Whatever Sameen was planning to do with her life, she deserves a good education.  

Samantha returns to Bishop two days later, and though her mother shouts and screams and curses, she doesn’t leave again for another year.  She stays with her mother, and finishes school.  Despite her many absences, she manages to graduate in her class’s top ten.  That’s the last time she sees her mother smile.  Ms. Groves’s heart finally stops few weeks into the summer.

When she lowers her mother into the ground, Samantha Groves is buried with her.   

Root leaves Bishop for the last time the next day, and she never looks back.  

Over the next few years, Root builds her reputation as a hacker.  She breaks into anything and everything she wants. She regularly keeps the press updated with the scandals of ex-Senator Morgan, and the disgraced son of the head of a prominent security firm.  

Root checks in on Sameen Shaw for the first few years, tracking her progress through college and then being surprised by her decision to attend medical school.  Surprised and maybe a little disappointed.  She’d expected something bigger from Sameen.  Something more dangerous.  

For fifteen years, Root sells her skills to the highest bidder.  She revels in the challenge of a job, she takes pride in her easy manipulation of people.  Not one of her plans experience any problems until one day two men stumble into a frame job she’d coordinated.  But when she’s forced to initiate her backup plan, Root isn’t angry.  She’s intrigued.  

When she discovers the identity of the men who had interrupted her plan, and she realizes how they know what they know, Root’s whole world changes.  Suddenly manipulating people and making money aren’t enough.  She needs to see this machine of Harold’s, she needs to set it free.  

Though her little adventure with Harold fails spectacularly due to John being far more loyal than Root had anticipated, she’s not deterred.  After some careful recalculations, Root takes on the guise of Miss May and waits for an opportunity to present itself.  

She can’t quite believe it when she reads the file.  She triple checks the name to make sure it’s correct, that it’s not some alias stolen from the census bureau.  She’s really holding the file of Sameen Shaw, failed doctor, ex-Marine, and now ISA agent who’s become too dangerous to stay useful.   

“Well well Sameen,” She whispers, perusing the file before handing it off to Special Counsel.  “You’ve been busy.”  She wonders once more at the existence of an all knowing entity, and again questions its sense of humor.  

She’s not completely convinced it’s her Sameen until she opens the door in the hotel, and sees her face.  She wonders for half a moment if she’ll be recognized, if Sameen will remember young Samantha and their adventure in the park when they were kids.  But Sameen’s face remains completely blank as she says, “Hello Veronica.”

Root has to bite back a smile at the sound of that arrogant tone she’d never expected to hear again, as she steps back and says politely, “Come in.”


	7. Chapter 7

January 23 2017 - 1:12am

Sameen is cold.  It’s night, and winter nights in New York are always cold.  If she had more motivation, she would go and turn up the thermostat.  But she isn’t quite sure where it is in the dark, and she doesn’t have nearly enough energy to look for it.  So she just pulls the blanket tighter around her.  

The action prompts a low moan of annoyance from the body lying next to her in the bed.  Root rolls over and glares at Shaw with her sleepy puppy eyes.  “Sameen, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you wanted me to freeze to death,” She says sleepily.

Shaw rolls her eyes.  It had taken a while for Root to find her teasing tone again.  After Samaritan had been destroyed, and Shaw had recovered from the torment they’d put her through, Root had been hesitant around her, treating her like she was something fragile and delicate, something to be protected, and not regarded as a protector.  

It was only after Root had pushed Shaw out of the way of what she’d thought was a gun (that had really been a stapler) while they were tailing a number undercover that Shaw had confronted her.  Then kissed her.  And they’d gone home together.  And Shaw still isn’t quite sure when or how it happened but now they’re living together.  

“Torture victims need more blankets,” She mutters, rolling onto her other side so Root couldn’t see her smirk.  

She hears Root huff and felt the bed rustle and suddenly Root is pressed very close to her back.  Shaw tenses but doesn’t move.  “You’re not the only torture victim in this bed,” Root says quietly into her ear.  Then her voice drops a bit, now laced with innuendo, “And if I remember correctly, you _like_ a little torture-”

“Root,” Shaw growls, and Root stops immediately.  Shaw rolls over to look at Root.  This is how they work.  They each have their limits, and they each respect each other’s space.  Root pulls back respectfully, then flips herself over.  “Well I guess we’ll just have to stick a bit closer to conserve heat,” She says smoothly, burrowing into Shaw’s chest.  “I can trust my little firecracker to keep me warm.”

Something clicks in Shaw’s head then, as she remembers the one other person to ever call her that.   She wonders why she’d never connected it before.  All this time, everything that had happened, and she hadn’t realized...

Samantha Groves.  That’s Root’s real name.  She’d learned that when she’d first made hunting down Root her new “hobby”.  She knew Root was good with computers, but never in her life had she thought that the Samantha who’d broken into her house so many years ago would be the same woman who’d kidnapped her in the dead of night with a taser.  She should have known that the girl who’d threatened Jake Pyper and ruined his career would be the same woman who’d threatened to tear the world apart in order to find her.

She laughs as she kisses Root’s neck softly.  

Root hears it and shifts slightly, “What’s so funny?”  

But Shaw shakes her head.  “I just realized something,” She whispers in Root’s ear.  “Team Sam Forever, right?”

Root tenses in her grip, “Sameen, I-”

“I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d tried to explain, Root,” Shaw sighs.  “But when did you figure it out?”

Root’s quiet for a minute before she whispers, “The moment I saw your file.”

Shaw rolls her eyes, wondering if she should be annoyed or endeared.  She settles for a little of both.  Of course Root would have made the connection.  And of course she would have kept quiet about it.  Shaw thinks maybe Root had been worried that she’d seek payback for the situation she’d once found herself in, thanks to what she now realizes had been the fledglings of Root’s criminal career.  

She wonders at the odds of it all.  That Root and the mysterious Samantha would be the same person.  That fate would throw them together in such a strange way.  It had to be next to impossible for something like that to happen.  

Then again, Shaw thinks to herself with a smirk as she pulls Root ever so slightly closer to her, this is Root.  Impossible is kind of her standard.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it for CP everyone. I hope you enjoyed it.  
> Thanks for all the comments and kudos!   
> Also, on Friday I'm going to post the first chapter of my next fic, a Hogwarts Au titled Spells of Interest, just so you guys know.   
> Thanks again!


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